Page 71 of The Beloved Escapade

The sentence had nowhere honest to go. The truth was that his mind was still in a chapel, tapping a wall that had already given him its answer. He could not say that to her face. The sentence died between them. He watched her hear it.

“Of course,” said Lucy. Level. Bright. She smoothed his lapels where her hands had been, a small wifely motion that cut him. She stepped back and wished him good night. She took her candle up the stairs with her back straight. Lorenzo stood in the library and listened to the fourth stair creak under her and hated himself with a new thoroughness.

He had watched himself do it. That was the worst part. He was failing her.

The next evening, he noticed the Malory.

He came into the library before dinner, and something was wrong with the room. It took him a minute to find it. The round table by her chair. For weeks, it had held the big calf-bound Le Morte d’Arthur, open or shut but always there, thick with her paper markers, one for every passage about the sword. She had read bits of it to him on the good days, feet tucked under her. She had done the voices in the carriage when they had still believed they would find something.

That book had become part of the furniture, part of their travels, part of the evening, part of her.

The table was bare. Polished. A bowl of roses stood on it.

He looked to the shelves and found the book almost at once, high in its old place between the sermons and the sea atlases, squared away, spine even with its neighbors. Every marker gone. He crossed the room and stood in front of it. He put one finger on the leather of the spine, lightly.

She had stopped speaking of the sword. He counted back through the dinners and could not find Excalibur in any of them since Hwitmarbel. Not once. The word had simply left.

Standing there with his finger on the cold leather, the first thing he felt was relief. God rot him for it. Then the cold came. A book put away was a decision. Sometime in this house, in an hour he had not seen, Lucy had put the sword back on the shelf and taken out every marker. She had not told him.

What did a defeated heart do with that? It filed it. She is done with the venture. She was only ever here for it. She is coming to her senses. He let the thought stand because it hurt less than the other reading.

She sent for him the next morning. Two days before the wedding.

The footman brought the message to The Rusty Anchor at breakfast. Miss Carroway’s compliments, and would Signor di Bianchi be so good as to attend her in the library at eleven. The formality should have told him. Everything about that morning should have told him. He walked into it obstinately blind anyway.

She was at the window when he came in, with the light behind her, in the dove-colored morning dress, her hair dressed properly, not escaping its pins as it had before.

She did not come to him. She did not smile. When she turned, she was wearing a manner he had never seen on her before. He knew at once whose it was. Her father’s. Court manner. The King’s Bench standing invisible in the room with them.

“Thank you for coming,” said Lucy. “Please sit, if you wish. I shall stand. This will not take long, and I have rehearsed it, so I would be obliged if you would let me get through it.”

“Lucia—”

“Lorenzo. Please.”

He did not sit. He stood by the cold hearth, in the house where she had once put her back to the shelves and bid on his madness. She folded her hands at her waist, lifted her chin, and gave judgment.

“When we made our agreement in this room, its purpose was plainly stated by both parties. You were embarked upon a quest. I wished to be embarked upon it with you. You warned me, fairly and at the outset, that the quest came first. I accepted the term. The betrothal was contracted upon it.”

Her voice was level, frighteningly so.

“The quest is ended. Through no fault of yours. I will not hear it of any fault. A man cannot be blamed for the truth of history. But the agreement has failed, and a contract whose agreement has failed is discharged. I am therefore releasing you from your promise. The betrothal is dissolved.”

The room tilted. Lorenzo stood on the hearthstone and could not speak in either language.

“I shall deal with the vicar today,” she went on, evenly, ticking the points. “And with the arrangements and with my parents. You need do nothing and see no one. I shall tell everyone the truth, that I ended it. I am aware of what that means. By tonight, every soul in Little Severn will have the tale with their dinner, and my parents will arrive like artillery, and the county will have a name for me by Michaelmas. I have considered it.”

A short pause.

“It is a season’s talk. I have broad shoulders and, as you may have heard, a scandalous new fortune. Between them, I will manage. That is my concern, and none of yours, and I mention it only so you cannot mistake this for a decision made without forethought.”

“Lucia.” It came out cracked. “Why⁠—”

“Because I find, upon honest examination,” said Lucy, and her voice grew kinder, which was worse, “that you were right, and I was right, at the beginning, and we should have believed ourselves. I wanted the adventure, Lorenzo. I told you so in this room, in words I remember exactly. A husband who takes me with him when he goes. Well. There is nowhere now that you are going. I bargained for a companion on a quest. You warned me fairly which came first with you. Consider the warning honored.” Her chin came up the last degree. “And the contract discharged.”

Everything true in him stood up to fight.

It rose whole, three heartbeats of it.